235

THE PAVEMENT OF HELL

It Is Revealed in Blundering Efforts to Do Good "Regardless."

Danger in Benevolence Without Consideration Behind it -- Overturning the Existing Order.

There is no charitable industry -- if that expression may be used -- more energetically conducted in Omaha and In Nebraska than the finding of homes for homeless children, or the accuring of good homes for children who live in poor ones. This is, undoubtedly, a sensible, practical and beautiful charity. But it is one in which the most careful judgement needs to be exercised. The point of view of the person who makes a profession of charity is not always the best. Long familiarity with misery in many forms and the nose for economizing time, strength and money leads such person, however excellent they may be, to take a perfunctory view of their duties. They are apt to evolve theories which rapidly crystalize into dogmas And these dogmas are lived up to with unflinching faithfulness, and are liable to be inflicted upon the beneficiaries -- or the victims -- of their benevolence, with something akin to tyranny. It is not difficult to see how it all comes about. At first, it is true, they feel for each suffering man and woman They make a study of his or her needs -- they give not only of time and money, but of themselves. But after a time, dismayed at the extent of the task before them, they reduce their charity to a system, degenerate into statistics and talk about "cases" instead of men and women. It is when homefinding for children reaches this point in the minds of chronically benevolent persons, that the time comes to temper common sense with sentiment.

What I mean is this. In the eagerness to adjust wrong conditions, to keep children from growing up amid vicious surroundings, to save them from privation and uncleanliness, they are taken from their natural homes and put in others. Their condition is probably benefited. The professional benefactor goes around with a virtuous feeling in his or her breast and never [?] to remember that that which God hath joined together has been put asunder.

Scientific charity is very well, education, sanitation, Christianity and good clothes are very well. But older than any of these things, reaching down into the deepest mysteries of human existence, reaching up to link man with God, binding us all in the bundle of life together with thongs stronger than life or death, is the love that links a mother to her child.

I say now, candidly, that I think there is a tendency to find too many homes for children. I think there is too much attempt made to persuade poverty stricken parents to give up their children; I think wrong doing girls too frequently resign their babies to the ready accommodation of convenient charities; I think we are too disregardful of the natural ties.

These self-sacrificing philanthropists say, not wihout some reason, that a child is better off in a well-kept, Christian, refined home than in a dirty, pagan and ignorant one.

Do you know, I am not sure that the premises are absolutely correct? I am rather inclined to the opinion that it is an open question, and that the dirty, pagan and ignorant home may be where the child is happiest.

And the constitution of the United States insures to every child, as well as to every man and woman, the right to the pursuit of happiness. No one has a right to make us prosperous, or refined, or Christian against our will. If any little child among us prefers to shiver over the scant fire in a shanty on the river bottoms, half clothed and half fed, for the sake of seeing the face of a rough, tired, loving mother at night, then that little child has a right to stay there, and no one has a moral right to take her away and put her in the midst of good people, good furniture, good books and good influences.

Of course, everyone will affirm that htis is a debatable point. And I admit the privilege and benefits of debate. But since the societies of charity and the charitable persons have their dogmas, I may also have mine. And I say a little child would rather be beaten by its own mother than to live unbeaten with a woman not its mother And I say again that the child has a right to its pursuit of happiness.

Why does my little boy sit and gaze at me with happy eyes -- why does he run his fingers over my face with an eloquence of touch in them? Why does he nestle close to me with smiles and say, "Mine, mine!" if anybody else touches me? Not because I am any better to him than "several other persons I am not very much with him; I am not always patient. I sometimes punish him, I refuse him a great many things that he wants. He does not therefore love me better than he loves anyone "else for any good reason. He loves me from instinct -- instinct bound up in each fibre of his dimpled and beautiful body -- instinct lying in the mystic cells of his busy brain -- instinct throbbing and surging with the blood of his passionate little heart.

Now supposing that I were even more unworthy of him than I am, that his future would suffer materially from his association with me, would it be best to take him from me? If you want a tree to bear fruit, is it best to cut of the roots close to the trunk and leave them bleeding?

The philosophic person with good furniture and a fund of respectability will reply that there is a difference between the child in my home and the child in the home of the scrub woman whose husband is a drunkard, and whose life is encumbered with repulsive cares I don't believe it. I think dirty, rough little hands hold as tight to mother's skirts as white, dimpled little hands I believe that the thrill that runs up from such a clutch, along the dress skirt to the mother's heart, is just as delicious when the gown is of work-soiled cotton as when it is of azure silk.

THE PAVEMENT OF HELL

It Is Revealed in Blundering Efforts to Do Good "Regardless."

Danger in Benevolence Without Consideration Behind it -- Overturning the Existing Order.

There is no charitable industry -- if that expression may be used -- more energetically conducted in Omaha and In Nebraska than the finding of homes for homeless children, or the accuring of good homes for children who live in poor ones. This is, undoubtedly, a sensible, practical and beautiful charity. But it is one in which the most careful judgement needs to be exercised. The point of view of the person who makes a profession of charity is not always the best. Long familiarity with misery in many forms and the nose for economizing time, strength and money leads such person, however excellent they may be, to take a perfunctory view of their duties. They are apt to evolve theories which rapidly crystalize into dogmas And these dogmas are lived up to with unflinching faithfulness, and are liable to be inflicted upon the beneficiaries -- or the victims -- of their benevolence, with something akin to tyranny. It is not difficult to see how it all comes about. At first, it is true, they feel for each suffering man and woman They make a study of his or her needs -- they give not only of time and money, but of themselves. But after a time, dismayed at the extent of the task before them, they reduce their charity to a system, degenerate into statistics and talk about "cases" instead of men and women. It is when homefinding for children reaches this point in the minds of chronically benevolent persons, that the time comes to temper common sense with sentiment.

What I mean is this. In the eagerness to adjust wrong conditions, to keep children from growing up amid vicious surroundings, to save them from privation and uncleanliness, they are taken from their natural homes and put in others. Their condition is probably benefited. The professional benefactor goes around with a virtuous feeling in his or her breast and never [?] to remember that that which God hath joined together has been put asunder.

Scientific charity is very well, education, sanitation, Christianity and good clothes are very well. But older than any of these things, reaching down into the deepest mysteries of human existence, reaching up to link man with God, binding us all in the bundle of life together with thongs stronger than life or death, is the love that links a mother to her child.

I say now, candidly, that I think there is a tendency to find too many homes for children. I think there is too much attempt made to persuade poverty stricken parents to give up their children; I think wrong doing girls too frequently resign their babies to the ready accommodation of convenient charities; I think we are too disregardful of the natural ties.